Your destiny lies before you. Choose wisely.

Sep 18, 2007

Sept 11 2007 Nesreen at Boston College's Iraq Awareness Week

Thank you for inviting me to
speak in this day in your college. Thanks to every one seeks peace and a better
future in this world.

A special thanks to Alexandra
Saieh for her work in setting all this up and thanks to the undergraduate
Government of Boston College who are fighting for telling the truth.

I read a sign after the first
moments of my arrival to your country that said, “We will never forget.” Yes
your loss was large. I can feel your pain and your loss. And yes it is not easy
to forget what happened that day. I was there in Baghdad watching TV.
Peacefully at home I watched the attack tens of times. People were waving for
help from windows and some of them jumped from the building. I was speechless
wondering what was going on and why? Who was responsible for that? And what was
the message? Was it an action or a reaction? What about the victims and their
families?

Meanwhile I want you to
remember that our loss is ten times greater than yours. And allow me to remind
you that Iraqi children have nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraqi women have
nothing to do with 9/11. We live in constant fear in our own homes and we have
nothing to do with 9/11.

Allow me to remind you of
your promises and commitments to the Iraqi people of more stability and freedom.
We have nothing now but bloodshed, bombed houses, no electricity and no water
and no fuel, burning, looted buildings. Violence is escalated day after day
leaving dead bodies for the dogs in the streets. Instead of going to school,
many children are begging in the streets. More than eight hundred thousand
children may now be out of school according to the recent estimate by Save the
Children of the UK.

Before the Gulf War about
ninety percent of Iraqis could read and write. Today only about fifty percent
are literate. Hundreds of families are homeless and begging for some help. More
than four million Iraqis are refugees in different countries. The millions who
are in Syria and Jordan are not allowed to travel to other countries. Many are
living in refugee camps waiting for the borders to be opened.

Iraqi women and widows are
the silent tragedy. More than a million and half of the Iraqi men are dead or
detained or disabled. These men’s wives or mothers or daughters now carry the
burden of running their families while facing the worst living circumstances.

With each new car bombing,
grenade explosion, or mortar attack the list of Iraqi widows grows longer.

We miss our safe and secure life.
We miss the mutual understanding, trust, and help we gave each other before your
occupation.

Iraq has become a small
prison to us. We are obsessed by detention and death ideas. I want you to be totally
aware of what is going on in Iraq because it is your occupation. You can’t
close your eyes. You have to listen to the Iraqis call for help…people are
dying and suffering each minute…

4 years I think, are enough
to recognize that your occupation depends on a lie, and you yourselves admitted
that the occupation was a mistake…

But

Who is responsible? Who will
be able to fix this ugly brutal mistake?

I am an Iraqi person and I witnessed
your occupation and still…

Every day is worse than the
day before.

I have to see your daily
troops’ humiliation of the Iraqis.

I have to see dead bodies
when I go to school.

I have to lose my students,
either by killing or kidnapping or traveling away from the violence.

I have to stop visiting two
of my sisters because it is too dangerous to travel to their neighborhoods.

I have to collect some extra
water in case there is no water.

I have
to live in permanent worry….

and
I don’t know why.

When I go to school I say goodbye
as if for good. I pray that my family will be safe.

Waiting for the school bus is
an ordeal because I don’t know when the shooting will start. The moments of
waiting for the school bus are years to me, taking my whole energy. I recite Quran
in fear.

I remember:

Once I was waiting for the bus
in the morning with others from my neighborhood. I was going to work. I heard a
shot. People around ran quickly but I was stuck in my place from fear. I looked
around and saw the man next to me was on the ground. He was bleeding. The blood
pumped from his head like a small red fountain. I did not know what do. I could
see he was alive because his fingers were twitching. I wanted to help him but I
could not. It is too dangerous to help him. The man who shot him will wait and
see who comes to help. Then he will kill the helper. I just went back home
crying; leaving the man in the street with no help.

Sometimes when I reach the school
I find 5 to 10 students instead of 35 and sometimes none of them because of the
violence that breaks out in the neighborhood. Instead of studying we share some
realistic, sad stories that happened to some of the students in the recent
days. Sometimes we cry together and sometimes we are afraid of each other. It
is so hard to trust anyone these days.

In school we were visited by
the American soldiers many times. Seeing them in the school is enough to
heighten fear in the students and teachers as well. This is the fear we feel
all the time, but sometimes more than other times.

Going back home is another
ordeal because you have to be in the street again where the American troops
patrol. They are a target so if you are near them you are a target too. Because
of checkpoints and bodies and shooting we change our direction many times and
reach our homes late. Meanwhile our cell phones never stop ringing because our
families are so worried. If you get home safely you have to finish your work
before sunset because there is no electricity.

You know it is very hot in
Baghdad. 130 degrees is hot. I remember a night when my nephew, 4 years old,
woke up after midnight sweating and crying. He was unable to sleep. I heard him
crying and asking his father to switch on the generator for the air
conditioner. I went with my brother to the generator in the garden and he tried
hard but there was no fuel. There was a curfew in the neighborhood and the fuel
seller could not come and we could not go out to buy fuel somewhere else. My
brother took his son in his lap and stayed up all night fanning. I saw the tears in my brother’s eyes that
night. He couldn’t afford his son the simple thing of fresh, cold air.

You know what?

I never stop comparing
between your life and ours in Baghdad. You show no sign of war and my people
are dying because of your mistake. My people have no cold clean water to drink.
You light candles in addition to the electricity to add a romantic touch to
your evenings and my people are living in the dark because of a mistake?

Our children are turned into
orphans because of a mistake?

Our women turned into widows,
taking men’s job to run their families life because of a mistake!

We have to live in a
permanent fear because of a mistake?

My people are killed and my
country is falling a part because of a mistake?

You are a powerful people but
this doesn’t mean deprive others life, you are not the only people on
earth…there are others who are in urgent need for your help…